Summary: Maeve Pessis was interviewed by Mary McCosker on July 22, 2009. Through her work with Friends of the Lafayette Library and the Lafayette Vision Committee. Maeve was one of the members of the community who knew the difference a new library could make. She describes the collaborative effort, involving a large and diverse group […]

Summary: Gwen Lennox was interviewed by Barbara Baratta on August 4, 2009. Gwen remembered being a voracious reader while she was growing up in Selma, a small farming community in the central valley. Her parents had been active in their community, and when Gwen moved to Lafayette in 1993 she soon became an early and […]

Summary: Lois Laine was President of the Friends of the Lafayette Library in the late 1980s. She became part of the Lafayette Vision Committee, a diverse group of individuals which was assembled by Anne Grodin to anticipate the growing city’s future needs. In this interview, Lois Laine describes how the committee proceeded to recognize that […]

Summary: Alice Johnson was interviewed by Georgi McLain in 2008. Alice moved to Lafayette in 1959 and almost immediately she began looking for ways to make a contribution to the city’s cultural organizations and to local government. She was active as a member of the Walkways and Trails Commission and the local chapters of the […]

Summary: Mary McCosker, a Lafayette native, was interviewed by Georgi McLain on June 24, 2009. She had been involved with the project to build the new Lafayette Library and Learning Center–which was on track to open 5 months later–for many years at that point. She recalls in this interview that Lafayette’s out-dated current library had […]

Summary: Robin Holt was interviewed by Pat Riegg on May 19, 2008. She and her husband, a Navy officer based in Alameda, moved to Lafayette from Hawaii in 1975. Long a member of the Friends of the Lafayette Library, she became involved with the project to develop a new library after attending a presentation by […]

Summary: Susan Weaver was interviewed on November 25, 2008, by Mary McCosker. As a professional librarian working for the country, she was the last manager of the “old library,” which opened in 1962, and the first at the new (2009) library. Having lost her hearing at age 2, Susan showed an interest throughout her career […]

Summary: Rick and Janet Cronk were interviewed by Nancie Sherman on March 27, 2009. Rick grew up in Montclair and Janet in Palo Alto. They met when they were both students at Berkeley. Later they moved to Lafayette and raised their family here, and Rick spent thirty years growing Dreyers into the largest ice cream […]

Summary: Robi Duncan, Senior Clerk at the old Lafayette Library, was interviewed by Mary McCosker on April 3, 2009. Robi grew up in Concord, but she had spent three months living with her grandmother in Lafayette, and going to school here, while her family was building a new home. She returned to serve the Lafayette […]

Summary: Dorothy Walker was interviewed by Brenda Hepler on October 13, 2009. She had grown up in San Rafael, where libraries played an important role in her childhood. After her family moved to Lafayette in 1956 Dorothy went to Acalanes High School and then to UC Berkeley, where she became a teacher and stayed on […]